Peter James Fullagar: Ecuador day 1

ECUADOR

Naturetrek special tour

12^th to 26^th February 2008

Tour report

Leader: Alejandro Solano. Participants: Peter Fullagar, Barbara and Eric Pilcher.

Introduction This tour was arranged at short notice by Naturetrek Ltd following the cancellation of their tours to Bolivia owing to political unrest in that country.
Naturetrek put together an itinerary with their ground agents (Neblina Forest) which was a compromise between their ‘Cock of the Rock’ and 'Choco' tours with additional sites of importance ornithologically.
The paragraphs below follow the daily program together with short notes on items of interest. Daily records of birds seen and heard can be found in detail in the accompanying spread sheet. Some photographs are included with the text but a website link to a more extensive photo-gallery is provided.

Ecuador

Topographical map showing roughly the three areas visited

Two oblique views in Google Earth showing GPS clusters from this trip.
The upper one is viewed from the NW and the lower one from the S

12 February - Tuesday. Our flight from Heathrow was delayed almost 2 hours because of fog which in turn meant a frantic rush through ‘transit’ in Miami to catch our flight to Quito.
Needless to say our luggage didn’t make it and it only caught up with us 36 hours later.
We were met and transferred to our hotel in Quito grateful for the chance to go straight to bed in this, the second highest capital in the world, at 2850 metres (9600 feet).

Grasslands (anthropogenic?) along our approach road to Yanacocha reserve

on the northern slopes of volcan Pichincha

Heading up the track to the Yanacocha reserve

Alejandro Solano - our guide

13 February - Wednesday. An early continental breakfast and departure at 6am set the pattern for most of the trip. Our leader Alejandro and driver Milton soon had us driving out of Quito and climbing the lower slopes of Pichincha, the volcano which dominates the city. We visited the Yanacocha reserve in temperate moss-clad forest seeing our first Great Sapphirewings and Sword-billed Hummingbirds at feeders - unlike them we noticed the altitude, having recorded a height of 3570 metres (11700 feet).

Our walk today in the Yanacocha Reserve on the west slopes of Pichincha.
The map is orientated with N to the right. The viewing altitude is 3km.
We walked from point 14 to point 15.

Unfortunately this was the only area explored by us in Ecuador that was covered at the time, in Google Earth, by high resolution satellite mapping. For this reason it was impossible to repeat such detailed topographic mapping of our daily activities elsewhere. The only other GPS location at such resolution was a fix on our hotel in Quito!

Our trail in Yanacocha reserve traversing some steep ridges

Sheltering from the rain at the end of the trail - Yanacocha reserve

Trumpet flowers the like of which the hummingbirds feed from (image by EJP)

We ate our packed lunch in the vehicle. Having left Quito in clear conditions with only early mist swirling among the lower slopes, heavy rain began after mid-day. Besides the early starts this was to become a more troublesome feature of the trip, repeated almost every afternoon (that is when it didn’t rain most of the day anyway!).

Start of the trail in Yanacocha reserve

In the afternoon we took the old Nono - Mindo road over the western ridge of the Andes joining the new highway towards Nanegalito in improving weather, making for the turn-off to the Maquipucuna Lodge where we were to stay for 3 nights. We made several birding stops along the way calling in for coffee and Bolones at the Café Armadillo. Bolones, we discovered (constructed rather like a large Scotch Egg) is a staple and filling snack, consisting of a core and outer covering based on corn mash with varied vegetables and some chilli.

Coffee while waiting for our bolones Armadillos Cafe

Today we saw 67 species. Some we are to encounter regularly over the next fortnight: Black Vulture, Tropical Kingbird, Southern House Wren, Blue-and-white Swallow, Southern Rough-winged Swallow, Rufous-collared Sparrow and Lemon-rumped Tanager. Fifteen others we do not see again. These included, Bar-bellied Woodpecker, Sapphire-vented and Golden-breasted Pufflegs, Burrowing Owl, Rufous-naped Brush-Finch, Stripe-headed Brush-Finch, Superciliaried Hemispingus, Golden-crowned Tanager, Grassland Yellow-Finch and White-sided Flower-piercer. Also, we recorded five species which we only heard today and did not again encounter – Tawny-breasted Tinamou, Barred Fruiteater, White-browed Spinetail, Undulated Antpitta and Ocellated Tacapulo. Especially abundant on this first day was the Great Thrush but we see few of these splendid large ‘Blackbirds’ over the next week or so until we again encounter them during the last three days of the trip.

Sapphire-vented Pufflegs and Buff-winged Starfrontlets
at hummer feeders - Yanacocha Reserve